Archive for August, 2016

While international student mobility continues to flow North, emerging countries in the global South are fast becoming major players, says Professor Hans de Wit, director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College in the United States.
It will not be long before China bypasses top student destination nations like Australia and the United Kingdom.

In a promising moment for cross-continental tertiary learning, 20 August saw the Higher Education Forum for Africa, Asia and Latin America officially launched in Durban on South Africa’s east coast before 60 delegates from 18 nations.

By Henrietta Cook, The Sydney Morning Herald – in University World News.

Everyone has a unique typing style – but cheaters type differently. With this in mind, a Melbourne start-up has created anti-plagiarism software which is being trialled at four major Australian universities.

The factors behind Denmark’s position as a leading producer of high-class scientific research are discussed in a report and conference comparing data from Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden, with the warning that future success cannot be guaranteed without recruitment of new talent, continuing international collaboration and maintaining an innovative research culture.

By Goldie Blumenstyk, The Chronicle of Higher Education – in University World News.

The US Department of Education has chosen four computer coding boot camps and the global conglomerate General Electric to take part in an experiment partly using unaccredited providers to supply higher education but also employing some very unusual quality assurance providers to measure quality.

The growth of private higher education provision, especially via for-profit providers, requires better regulation to reduce the “often considerable” risk to students, according to a six-country study.
It warns that there is little evidence that opening up higher education to more private providers, as proposed in the United Kingdom, will improve the quality of provision.

The U.K.’s vote to leave the EU is the biggest blow in the union’s history. However, the withdrawal of the U.K. or any member is by no means its only existential threat. On a single day in July, not 10 days after the Brexit vote, Italy threatened to defy Brussels and bail out the country’s banks; the European Commission threatened to sanction Spain and Portugal for running budget deficits above EU-imposed ceilings; and France threatened to stop applying an EU directive on seconded workers …. Disintegration threatens on all sides:
-horizontal (by the withdrawal of existing members);
-sectoral (by the collapse of common policies);
-vertical (the loss of power and authority to national governments)….

A survey of academics in the United Kingdom has found that some world-class scientists have already turned down posts at universities in the UK since the referendum in June that voted in favour of Britain leaving the European Union and one in five were planning to leave UK research posts, citing Brexit as the reason.